Texas Personal Injury Lawyer Explains How Accident Cases Are Evaluated

Like most personal injury law firms, DeKeyzer Law provides free legal consults to individuals and families that have been wronged through personal injury or a loss of life. A free legal consult allows individuals and families to receive no cost legal advice and should provide enough information to the law firm in deciding whether to accept or reject the case. Evaluating a potential personal injury case has three core elements—legal liability, damages, and collectability. Successful personal injury lawyers must be able to quickly assess these three elements to advise potential clients properly and not waste valuable time and resources. 

What Is Legal Liability And What Are Important Facts To Know? 

Legal liability means that a person or entity violated a duty it owed to the aggrieved party and can involve both civil law and criminal law. Personal injury law concerns civil liability or civil torts. Common examples include vehicle accidents, premise liability, defective product liability, or workplace accidents. Some civil torts that our personal injury lawyers handle involve both criminal and civil liability, such as sexual assaults, DWI auto accidents, or inadequate security cases. 

When a potential client calls DeKeyzer Law, our injury lawyers must first determine whether the alleged wrongdoer violated a legal duty. Some situations, like vehicle accidents, are straightforward, as all drivers have a duty not to crash into other drivers on the road. Premise liability, however, is more nuanced because the level of duty depends on the classification of the injured party—i.e. was the injured party a trespasser, licensee, or invitee. Defective product liability cases also present a challenge in assessing the company’s duty because the company’s duty depends on what the company knew or should have known about the potentially dangerous product.

Skilled personal injury lawyers can accurately evaluate whether a potential case has legal liability based on thorough and targeted questions. In difficult cases, this takes additional time and effort but can be accomplished. However, when potential cases require heavy resources to establish liability, this generally changes the balance of accepting or rejecting a potential case and requires a potential case to have significant damages to be evaluated for acceptance.  

Measuring Damages In Personal Injury Cases

For a comprehensive analysis of personal injury damages, please refer to our many articles on damages, as this section limits the discussion to the initial evaluation of damages. When potential clients contact us for help, our damage questions focus on a few topics to ascertain the relative value of a case.

• How serious is the injury? Did the injury change your life forever or is it a mild nuisance soon to resolve? The severity of the physical injury directly impacts the value of a case. Life-changing injuries demand high-dollar settlement victories. Moderate injuries that require basic medical care and resolve within twelve months rarely justify six-figure recoveries.
• Did the injury cause you to miss income? Did the injury cause you to abandon a six-figure position, or did you miss a few weeks of work? Legally, this is referred to as loss of earning capacity, and losing out on a career of earnings dramatically increases the amount of money needed to receive just compensation. 
• How has the injury or loss of life impacted your emotional health? Mental anguish damages are some of the most difficult damages to analyze, but they often cause the most traumatic, lasting harm in personal injury and wrongful death cases. In the initial case evaluation, the lawyer must analyze the potential client’s truthfulness, sincerity, family structure, and likability. After accepting the case, the personal injury lawyer must spend hours focused on the injured client and family to accurately analyze mental anguish damages.   

What Does Collectability Mean in Personal Injury Cases

Collectability refers to the likelihood of collecting just compensation compared to the total harms and losses suffered. For example, if a young mother is killed in a motor vehicle accident by an ordinary driver that has a minimum limits auto insurance policy, the victim’s family will not be able to collect full value because the minimum limits policy is only $30,000 dollars in Texas. But if the at-fault driver was working for a large company and driving a company truck, it is reasonable to expect to collect at or near full value because big businesses carry multi-million-dollar insurance policies and have assets to satisfy million-dollar judgments. Sometimes, the lack of collectability on an otherwise winning case is the most difficult thing for injury victims to encounter. 

Texas Personal Injury Lawyers Fighting For Texas-Size Justice 

Meagan and Holland DeKeyzer are Texas Made Lawyers fighting for Texas-Size Justice. DeKeyzer Law was created to help individuals and families navigate some of life’s biggest challenges. DeKeyzer Law has over 20 years of combined personal injury litigation experience. We focus on vehicle accident cases, personal injury cases, and wrongful death cases on a contingency basis, meaning you only pay attorney’s fees when we win the case. We offer free consultations, so call DeKeyzer Law at (713) 904-4004 anytime.